Willem Dafoe can make a scarred surgeon tender and a softly spoken employer frightening. We value that control more than the familiar eccentricity, though his pleasure in a part can exceed the film’s need for it.
Fi1m perspective
Willem Dafoe’s face is a patchwork of old stitches in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things (2023), and his Godwin Baxter is unexpectedly gentle. We were moved by that tenderness, because the scarred surgeon could so easily have been played only for unease. This is the Dafoe we value most, given room to do more than look alarming. The film runs out of new things to say well before it stops, but the performance deserves better than to be remembered for the make-up.
His breakthrough came as Sgt Elias in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), before David Lynch used his menace in Wild at Heart (1990). The fit was less comfortable in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996), where his David Caravaggio seemed awkward within the ensemble, though he usefully interrupted its restraint. Norman Osborn in Spider-Man (2002) gave the more alarming Dafoe another outlet. The quieter work of The Florida Project (2017), in which he plays Bobby, is an important counterexample.
Lanthimos makes that warmth more troubling in Kinds of Kindness (2024). As Raymond, the employer who dictates what Jesse Plemons’s Robert eats and reads, Dafoe hands out gifts and never needs to raise his voice. He makes the control more disturbing by behaving like a fond uncle, leaving Plemons to show what the need for approval does to Robert. We find the first fable sharp, but the other two repeat its lesson; Dafoe’s assurance cannot keep that repetition interesting.
Robert Eggers makes good use of his relish in Nosferatu (2024), where the occultist von Franz interrupts the film’s solemnity. We found him a relief, precisely because the film can be so determined to remain grave. The performance may be too much for some, but Eggers gives that excess a purpose.
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) is a useful warning against assuming his presence will be enough. Dafoe is a joy as Jackson, but editor Jay Prychidny has five plots to cut between, and this whole thread could disappear without damaging the story. We can enjoy the actor and still wish the film had found a reason to need him. Start with Poor Things for a part that asks more of him than an entertaining interruption.
Biography
Willem Dafoe is an American actor born on 22 July 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin. He made his film debut with an uncredited role in Heaven's Gate (1980) and has appeared in more than 100 films.
Dafoe has collaborated with directors including Yorgos Lanthimos and Robert Eggers. He played Godwin Baxter in Poor Things (2023) and Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz in Nosferatu (2024). Other 2024 credits include roles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Kinds of Kindness.
He has received four Academy Award nominations and an Honorary Golden Bear in 2018.
